YUTANPO SHIRANE

PEOPLEText: Sachiko Kurashina

The project exhibitions “Tokyo Art Frontline” will be held for four months at Soso Cafe in Sapporo from this month. We will invite artists in the forefront every month in order to let visitors feel creators’ worlds closer than before through exhibitions and performance events. The fist artist for this project is Yutanpo Shirane He made the cover design for this issue. From magazines to advertisements and CD sleeves, his field of illustration is quite wide. Find out more about him.


© Yutanpo Shirane

Please introduce yourself.

I am working as an illustrator with the pen name Yutanpo Shirane in Tokyo. I was born in 1968 in Saitama, and became a freelance illustrator after graduating from a design school. I used to make photo-collage works by PhotoShop in the CG unit “Spark”. After I left that unit, I had mainly been drawing illustrations with acrylic colours but I have been using Mac instead of acrylic colours starting 3 years ago. Anyway, 10 years have passed since I became an illustrator.


© Yutanpo Shirane

What kind of works do you usually do?

More than half of my works are cuts for magazines and covers for books. From adult magazines to ladies’ fashion magazines and kids magazines, the genres of magazines I draw illustrations vary. I draw comics as well as illustrations for CD sleeves and advertisements. I am making an original DVD and figures at the moment, too. The routine works do not allow me to spend more time for DVDs and figures but I hope I could finish them within this year.


© Yutanpo Shirane

Where do you put the line between illustrations for clients and for exhibitions?

Whether I can make clients satisfied or not is the most important thing when I do client works. Once I can reach a certain level, I include various things I want to as additional fun elements. So my work style and the points I put my ideas are different. It depends on the works.

I take an exhibition as a place where I can freely compose my own place to express my world. As I do the client works, I try to make staff at a gallery satisfied but the big difference in this case is that I start to consider contents of the exhibition from scratch. So my work style is different as well. The client works and the exhibitions are different things but I enjoy both of them.

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